This week’s “Snide Remarks,” entitled “The Perfect Thanksgiving,” examines with great solemnity the different viewpoints held by various members of American society. The treatise is carefully researched and should be approached studiously.

J/K, it’s stupid like always.

You can subscribe to the weekly audio version with this URL, or just listen to today’s recording here. You can also just click the “play” button on the SnideCast player at the top of the page.

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Listen to this week’s podcast version here.
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It’s late and I’m tired! You have no idea what Thursdays do to me. They kill me, that’s what they do! All the writing, and the posting, and the e-mailing, and the podcast-recording, all because Friday is when the movies come out. I’m gettin’ too old for this. Which is sad, because I’m only 33, and my job is easy by most reasonable standards of measurement. I guess what I’m really saying is, I’m a wimp and I want sympathy.

Speaking of oldness, “No Country for Old Men” is the spotlight review in this week’s edition of “In the Dark.” It’s one of the best movies of the year, and possibly the best movie the Coen Brothers have ever made. It’s only on about 120 screens right now, but you should definitely seek it out.

In wide release, “Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium” is delightful and whimsical (though my positive review puts me squarely in the minority), while “Beowulf” is great-lookin’ but silly.

Two other limited-release reviews this week: “Control,” the sad but beautiful biopic about the lead singer of Joy Division, and “Southland Tales,” Richard Kelly’s trainwreck of a follow-up to his trainwreck cult hit “Donnie Darko.” I might have enjoyed it more if I had remembered to smoke some crack beforehand. You’d think the publicist would remind us of things like that.

In a shocking development, Horse Girl has responded to yesterday’s post and answered some of our burning questions. Did she misread “uninjured” as “injured”? No! Is she actually a teenage girl? No! Have her reading comprehension skills improved? No! Behold:

Ok Eric, maybe I did get a little worked up but you don’t even know who I am. For one thing i am NOT a teenager, I am a 25 year old mother/riding instructor/horse trainer. Both me and my friends (Simone, Ashley, and Beca) have loved horses ever since we were babies and we have been friends ever since we were babies. I have NEVER GROWN OUT OF LOVING HORSES and nethier have my friends.

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I wrote a “Snide Remarks” column in June that dealt with renewing my driver’s license, and somehow horses were involved, too. Accompanying the column was the picture seen here, of a minor British royal falling off her horse during an equestrian event. I included this caption: “She and the animal were both uninjured, but I don’t care, because that’s an awesome photo anyway.”

This cavalier attitude struck a nerve with a reader named Amber, who discovered the column five months later and posted three very angry comments (#60-62) on it. She also sent me the following scorching e-mail, from a return address of “beautyofhorses@[something].com”:

Have YOU read my posts ERIC!!?!?!!?!?!??? If you have you can tell that I’m pretty pisted off!!!!!!!! All my friends are too and they all [swear word] HATE YOU now!!!! How rude is it to post a picture of an inosint horse and rider getting injured and then say I DON”T CARE!!!!??!?! [So she read the part of the sentence that said I didn't care, but missed the part of the same sentence where I said they weren't injured. That is some seriously selective reading.] YOU [swear word]!!! It’s people like YOU who kill animals and the environment!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Maybe I should post a picture of YOU, yes YOU ERIC doing something painful and say “well I just wanted to post this picture because it is a good picture,but I don’t care that Eric’s hurt. I DON”T CARE!!!” [Fine with me! I'll send you some.] That’s what YOU did with the horse and rider!! Horses are amazing, beautiful animals and deserved to be treated with respect unlike YOU i may add!!!!!! SHOW A LITTLE RESPECT FOR OTHER THINGS IN YOUR PATHETIC LIFE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and to think I used to like this site!!!!! HA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I [swear word] hate it now!!!!!!!!!! I bet A LOT of other people do now too!! [How can they fail to, when you make your arguments so convincingly?] Oh ya and the driving learn how to drive YOURSELF [swear word]!!!!!!!!!!So please e-mail me back SOME kind of response.You should read my posts too. THEY might scare away some potential ericsnider site lovers!!!! BYE

P.S.I’m right to be doing so too!!!! Even though I didn’t put this letter in THE ANGRY LETTERS SECTION I want this to go STRAIGHT to YOU!!!!!! [I do wish more readers shared her foresight and labeled their correspondence as "angry" when appropriate. It would save my staff so much sorting time.]

Per her request, I replied to her e-mail. This is what I said:

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People have been posting stupid messages on the Internet for as long as the Internet has been around, maybe longer. I always thought it would be hard to single out the single stupidest message.

Until now.

As you know, I often post dumb e-mails written to Raven-Symone by fans who don’t realize the address they’re using is not actually her address. I post those e-mails here in this blog. On Saturday, someone named “Shanae” stumbled across one of the batches of Raven e-mails and posted the following comment. Read it carefully.

hello whoever this is,

i just wanted to say, you are so SICK TO ME. i mean you are saying raven fans are idots and they are not. that is making raven look like a bad person. raven if you ever read this you just lost a fan because of this fake person. i thought i should become a fan of tia and tamara mowery. i am just saying, whoever you are,since the people that write to the FAKE E-MAIL ADDRESS are stupid,you are just making yourself look like a bigger dumbie. i am so sorry raven for saying that but it is true. if you ever get the time, look at what this person is saying online. look at what your number 1 fans are saying. nobody should even e-mail you because of this stupid person. i dont even care if you show this e-mail to your friends,family,and husband this e-mail because it is not going to hurt me. you can thank this SICK PERSON FOR ME WRITING THIS LETTER.thank you and have a nice day or night. i am still going to be a fan but you are my 3rd favorite person in the world.

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New “Snide Remarks” today! It’s kind of brief, which is a good thing, because you can only drag out a joke for so long. It pertains to the ongoing Hollywood writers strike, so that means it’s timely, too! Torn from today’s headlines! The audio version is available on the just-linked page, as well as here.

Speaking of which, WGA member Mark Evanier addresses in his blog a question that several people have brought up, namely: Why should TV writers be entitled to residuals when if I, a software engineer (for example), devise something that makes my company millions of dollars, I don’t get any piece of it? Weren’t the writers already compensated when they received their salaries? Evanier’s explanation is sound and logical, and you should read it. (Thanks to Sean for pointing it out to me.)

Sign up for the “In the Dark” e-zine here.
Listen to this week’s podcast version here.
Subscribe to the podcast’s feed here.

It’s not in wide release yet, but the best movie you’ll find anywhere this weekend is “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead,” a fantastic crime thriller from director Sidney Lumet. The reasons for its greatness aren’t particularly deep or movie-critic-ish; it’s just an enthralling, well-made, straightforward movie. It’s the kind of movie that regular people will find compelling, too, not just snotty film critics. (The snotty film critics are just better at expressing why they like it. That’s why they make the big bucks.)

In wide release but not worth watching is “Fred Claus.” This movie is made out of poo.

Also made of poo: “P2,” a horror film set in a parking garage. Ooooh…. scaaaarrrryy.

Not made of poo at all: “Lions for Lambs,” starring Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep, and Robert Redford. It’s directed by Redford, too (his first since 2000′s “The Legend of Bagger Vance”), which has led many people to assume that it must be nothing but a liberal tirade. But it’s actually a very thoughtful dialogue between conservatives and liberals, and it makes good points on both sides.

A couple other limited-release films are reviewed this week. “Music Within” is a mediocre biopic of Richard Pimentel, a crusader for the rights of disabled people; “Sleuth” is a slick remake of the 1972 quasi-thriller, this time starring Michael Caine and Jude Law.

I’m guessing the average person doesn’t have Variety and The Hollywood Reporter on their newsfeed, and probably isn’t interested in the minor details of the Writers Guild of America strike anyway. So here’s a brief recap on the latest, and how it affects YOU, John and Jane Q. Public-Citizen. (You hyphenated when you got married.)

• First, don’t hold your breath for a quick resolution. The opposing sides — the WGA (the good guys) and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (the greedy fat cats) — became so polarized and incensed during the pre-strike negotiations that now everybody just hates each other. The AMPTP says it has no interest in resuming talks as long as the WGA members are picketing; the WGA isn’t going to end the strike until talks are resumed. Sigh.

• Variety says that “without reviving the WGA talks, the scribes’ work stoppage could easily bleed into the middle of next year” (!!!!!!!!!!) (emphasis mine).

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Oscar nominee Paul Giamatti!
2-time Oscar nominee Miranda Richardson!
Oscar winner Rachel Weisz!
Oscar winner Kathy Bates!
2-time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey!

The film: “Fred Claus”

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Oscar winner Nicolas Cage!
Oscar winner Jon Voight!
Oscar winner Helen Mirren!
Oscar nominee Harvey Keitel!
4-time Oscar nominee Ed Harris!

The film: “National Treasure: Book of Secrets”

I’ve been thinking about the Westboro Baptist Church lawsuit, and how it reflects on the difference between something being “right” and something being “legal.”

The facts are these. Headed by Fred Phelps, the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., is an unaffiliated Christian congregation focusing on one specific doctrine: that God hates all forms of homosexuality and its practitioners, that all homosexuals will burn in hell, and that so will the people who tolerate them.

Phelps’ teachings cast a wide net with regard to that last point. Basically, if you’re not actively persecuting and preaching against gays, you are tolerating them and thus in danger of hellfire. Phelps teaches that the United States is a cursed nation because it allows homosexuality to exist unpunished, and that when soldiers die in Iraq, it’s God’s punishment for America.

Phelps and his 100-member congregation, composed almost entirely of his family members, are infamous for picketing at funerals. They first came to prominence when they marched at gay murder victim Matthew Shepard’s memorial service, carrying signs declaring that Shepard was at that moment burning in hell. In the last few years, they’ve started doing the same thing at soldiers’ funerals, declaring the soldiers also to be in hell — not because they were gay, but because they were fighting for a nation that tolerates homosexuality.

They also picketed the funerals of Coretta Scott King and Mr. Rogers. Yes, Mr. Rogers. I don’t recall the specific reasons, but it definitely related to homosexuality. Everything comes back to homosexuality with Fred Phelps. You’d hear more references to gay sex in one Phelps sermon than you would in watching 10 hours of gay porn. (That figure is approximate.)

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